The length and width of lake docks vary depending on the type of lakeshore as well as the preference of the lakeshore owner. The requests for various widths and lengths of docks usually requires that docks be made to order for each application sometimes in dock lengths which preclude conventional shipping methods. That is, most conventional carriers have a maximum length for goods that they will transport or if they do transport longer length goods the costs of the transport becomes so costly it becomes uncompetitive to make and ship the dock to a customer in a remote location.
While posts for supporting a dock can be located at different positions along the dock in order to have a stable dock surface it is desirable to have a set of at least two elongated dock beams that run the entire length of the dock for supporting the dock planks thereon. With the use of continuous elongated dock beams one is assured that the dock planks can be secured to the dock beams to form a stable walking surface. One such dock beam that is suitable for forming elongated dock beams is the Vee shaped dock beams used in docks sold by R & D Manufacturing Inc. of Forest Lake Minn.
Aside from the difficulty in shipping docks in dock kit form another difficulty is that different length dock beams need to be fabricated for each different dock length that a customer orders, which results in requiring a large inventory of dock beams in order to anticipate the orders for different length docks. On the other hand additional dock planks can easily be added to the dock kit to accommodate requests for different length docks. Thus, there is a need for a universal dock kit that could be assembled in different lengths and also avoids the shipping problems when the length of the dock beams exceed the carriers standard capacity.
The invention described herein comprises a universal dock kit for in situ formation of dock beams of various length docks without incurring the costs and shipping restrictions on oversize items and without having an excessive inventory of dock beams.